We all have those mixed emotions when we enter the doors of the warm and moist DePaul Student Center. Whether you're grabbing a bagel from Brownstones or some questionable meat from Sabrosa, your meal consists of the same seven stages of grief every time.

Stage 1: Shock and Denial

At first, you think to yourself, is this really what my life has come down to? You can't believe you are walking into the Student Center to purchase something you will put inside your body. "No, this can't be, I am not actually going to eat this, am I?" So many questions like this are running through your mind as you wander back and forth between Kitchen and Deli.

Stage 2: Pain and Guilt

You quickly rethink your whole plan after you see the best options are wings with feathers still on them or the same pizza that has been at Kitchen for about a week now. You consider leaving and eating at a real restaurant but you know you are too broke for that. The growling in your stomach builds and the hunger pains grow as your mind is racing with the thoughts of what toxins you are about to consume.

Stage 3: Anger and Bargaining

At this moment, you are mad at yourself and the world because you have chosen your fate and now have to wait for single file for it. You tell yourself, you'll go out for dinner and eat something that hasn't expired yet. You begin to get even angrier as you are ordering what "food" you want on your plate."Well maybe since I don't eat this that often it won't be too bad" or you think something like " Maybe it's gotten better since the last time I had it". Deep down, you know none of these are true.

Step 4: Depression

After you are handed your plate of slop and find yourself a table, you slip into a deep and dark depression(the bad lighting in the STU does not help with the cause either). Tears mix with the watery grease that is falling from your deli sandwich, and you begin to contemplate dropping out of school even more. A long period of sad reflection begins to overtake you as the first bite turns into a swallow. "What could you have done differently" and "How did I get into this situation" are all that you can think of. Maybe if you had just taken the extra shift your boss offered you, you wouldn't be sitting here right now. Instead, you said no and told yourself you don't need that money. Oh, how you were wrong.

Stage 5: The Upward Turn

A few bites in you start to think that things could be worse. You could have no food and be starving, so what that this meal costs you 10 dollars for indigestible materials, at least you have 10 dollars to spend on it, right? The taste of the cardboard you are eating slowly gets better and you think about it less and less. Hey, maybe this isn't that bad after all.

Stage 6: Acceptance

After you are almost ready to continue on with the rest of the day and leave this traumatic experience behind you, you have come to peace with it all. You are no longer angered by the fact that you are paying 30,000 dollars a year and can't even get down the food. You know now that there's so much worse you could be going through and you are thankful for that. You shoot up from your chair empowered and you wish you could tell St. Vincent DePaul himself that you are so happy he existed just so you can be experiencing this exact moment right now.